THE LATINS
The Latins, Imitators of the Greeks. Epic Poets, Dramatic Poets. Golden
Age: Virgil, Horace, Ovid. Silver Age: Prose Writers, Historians and
Philosophers:--Titus-Livy, Tacitus, Seneca. Decadence Still Brilliant.
LATIN LITERATURE.--Latin literature is little more than a branch of Greek
literature. It commenced much later, finished earlier, and has always
poured into the others at least a portion of its living force. Roman
literature really begins only at the moment when the Romans came into
contact with the Greeks, read their works, and were tempted to imitate
them; that is to say, it commences in the third century before Christ.
The first manifestation of this literature was epic. Naevius and Livius
Andronicus made epopees. They are destitute of talent. Ennius made one:
it possessed merit; what the Latin critics have quoted of his
_Annals_ is marked, first by an energetic patriotic sentiment which
affords pleasure; then it possesses energy and sometimes even a certain
brilliance. In addition, Ennius wrote several didactic and satiric poems.
Among the Romans, Ennius was the great ancestor and father of Latin
literature.
LUCILIUS.--Lucilius was a satirist. Judging by the fragments of his work
which have come down to us, he was a very acute and penetrating political
satirist. Horace, despite his sovereign disdain for all that preceded his
own century, did not fail to value him and agreed that there was
something to be drawn and appreciated from this "muddy torrent."
COMEDY: PLAUTUS; TERENCE.--Comedy and tragedy existed at this period. It
may be apposite here to point out that it was later and in the finest
period of Latin literature that they ceased to exist. Plautus conceived
the plan of transporting to Rome Grecian comedies of the time of the new
comedy and of adapting them more or less to Latin morals. He possessed a
strong and brutal verve which did not lack power, and more than once
Molière did him the honour of taking inspiration from him. Terence, after
him, the friend of Scipio the second Africanus, and perhaps in
collaboration with him, in a way widely different from that of Plautus so
far as type of talent, tender, gentle, romantic, sentimental, smiling
rather than witty, so far as can be judged directly inspired by Menander,
wrote comedies which are highly agreeable to read, but it is doubtful if
they could ever have been widely appreciated on the stage. However, the
Roman writers held him in great esteem, and at one epoch of our own
history, in the seventeenth century, he enjoyed remarkable and unanimous
appreciation.
L'ATELLANE.--To comedy strictly defined, whether it dealt with Romans or
Greeks, the Romans also added the atellane, which came to them from the
Etruscans (Atella, a city of Etruria) and which was a sort of farce with
stereotyped characters (the fat glutton, the lean glutton, the old miser
always baffled, etc.). Pomponius and Naevius endeavoured to raise this
popular recreation to a literary standard and succeeded. It then became a
thoroughly national characteristic. There was considerable analogy
between it and the modern popular Italian comedy, showing its Cassandras,
its Pantaloon, and its Harlequin, without it being possible to assert
that the Italian comedy proceeded from the atellane. The atellane enjoyed
much success in the second century before Christ. It was, however, ousted
by the mime, which was the kind of comic literature thoroughly national
at Rome. The mime was a farce of popular morals, particularly of the
lower classes; it was a portrayal of the dregs of society in their comic
aspects. It maintained its sway until the close of the Roman Empire
without becoming more dignified; rather the reverse. The names of some
authors of mimes have survived: Publius Syrus and Laberius, in the time
of Caesar. What is curious is that these mimes, licentious and even
obscene though they were, throughout gave occasional utterance to highly
moral observations which Latin grammarians have preserved for us. This
curious mixture may be explained or contrasted at pleasure; perhaps it
was only a conventional habit.
TRAGEDY.--As for what there was of tragedy, it was destined to be yet
shorter-lived than comedy, but it was evidently very brilliant and it is
regrettable that it has not been preserved. Livius Andronicus and Nasvius
wrote tragedies, but the three greatest tragedians were Ennius, his
nephew Pacuvius, and Attius. Ennius imitated Euripides, Pacuvius
Sophocles, and Attius Aeschylus. All three soared to the grand, the
majestic, and the sublime; all seem to have been very sententious and
replete with maxims; but it is needful to be cautious: these authors are
known to us only by the citations made by grammarians, and grammarians
who, having naturally cited phrases rather than fragments of dialogue,
make it possible that these authors appear to us sententious when they
were in reality not abnormally so.
PROSE LITERATURE.--Prose literature at Rome appeared almost at the same
time as the poetic. Cicero has given us the names of great orators,
contemporaries of Ennius, and there were historians and didacticians in
prose of the same period. The elder Cato, the great censor, was an
historian; he wrote a work, _The Origins_, which seems to have been
the history not only of Rome but of all Italy since the foundation of
Rome; he was didactic; he wrote a _De Re Rustica_ (On Rural Life)
which has come down to us and is infinitely valuable as showing the
simplicity, the hardness, and the avarice of the old Roman proprietors,
all qualities which Cato thoroughly well knew they possessed.
THE AGE OF CAESAR.--The age of Caesar was a great literary epoch. Before
all and almost over all was Caesar himself: great orator, letter-writer,
grammarian, and historian. His _Commentaries_, that is, his memoirs,
history of his campaigns, are admirable in their conciseness and
precision of rapid and running narrative. Apart from him, Cornelius Nepos
made a very clear abridgment, characterised by marked sobriety, of
universal history under the title of _Chronica_. Varro, a kind of
encyclopaedist, wrote a _De Re Rustica_, also a work on the Latin
language, _Menippic Satires_--satires it is true, but mixtures of
prose and verse--and a work on _Roman Life_, as well as a crowd of
small books dealing with every possible subject. Cicero told him, "You
have taught us all things human and divine." He possessed immense
erudition and a violent mind not without charm. He can be imagined as a
sage of our own sixteenth century.
CICERO.--Cicero was perhaps the greatest _littérateur_ that has ever
lived. It is obvious that all tastes were in his soul at the same time,
as Voltaire said of himself, and he gratified them all. He was
politician, lawyer, orator, poet, philosopher, professor of rhetoric,
moralist, grammarian, political writer, correspondent; he encompassed all
human knowledge, involved himself in all human matters and was a very
great writer. What to-day interests us most in his immense output are his
political discourses, his letters and his moral treatises. His political
discourses are those of an honest man who always held upright views and
the sentiment of the great interests of his country; his letters are
those of a witty man and of an excellent friend; his moral treatises,
more particularly his _De Officiis_ (On Duties), are in a very
elevated spirit which subordinates all other human duties beneath
obligations towards one's country. He did not always rise to
circumstances; he was well content, on the contrary, that they should
serve him.
SALLUST.--Sallust, who as an individual seems to have been contemptible,
was a highly sagacious and excellent historian. He has left a history of
Catiline and another of Jugurtha. They are masterpieces of lucidity and
of dramatic vivacity. Admirable especially are his maxims, which seem as
well thought out as those of La Rochefoucauld: "Friendship is to desire
the same things and to hate the same things"; "the spirit of faction is
the friendship of scoundrels."
POETRY: CATULLUS.--Poetry was not less brilliant than prose in the time
of Caesar. It was the era of Lucretius and of Catullus. Catullus, a
delightful man of the world, a charming voluptuary, passionate and
eloquent lover, formidable epigrammatist, a little coloured by
Alexandrianism (but barely, for this trait has been much exaggerated),
comes very close to being a great poet. In many respects he closely
recalls André Chénier, who, it may be added, was thoroughly conversant
with his writing.
LUCRETIUS.--Lucretius is a very noble poet. If we knew Epicurus otherwise
than by fragments, it is highly probable we should be tempted to assert
that Lucretius was only a translator; but on that we cannot pronounce,
and of the didactic part of the poem of Lucretius (_On Nature_),
even if it were a simple translation, all the oratorical and the
descriptive portions would remain, and they are the most beautiful of the
work. In his invocations to Epicurus, in his prosopopoeia of nature to
man inviting resignation to death, in his descriptions of the immolation
of Iphigenia and of the cow wandering in the fields in search of her lost
heifer, there are a breadth, a grasp, and an epic grandeur, which recall
Homer, arouse thoughts of Dante, and which Virgil himself, whilst much
less unequal though never greater, has not attained.
THE AUGUSTAN AGE.--The Augustan Age, which was only really very great if
under this title is also included the epoch of Caesar and also that of
Octavius, and thus it was understood by our ancestors, does not fail to
offer writers of fine genius. These are Virgil, Horace, and Titus-Livy.
TITUS-LIVY.--Titus-Livy, who is one of the purest and most beautiful
writers and an orator of seductive talent in his own chamber, wrote a
Roman history composed, as to the first portion, of the legends
transmitted at Rome from generation to generation, and in which it is
impossible for us to distinguish the false from the true; for two-thirds
of the work made very accurate investigations of all that previous
historians and the annals of the pontiffs could give the author. As has
been observed, Titus-Livy, being a Cisalpine, was a Gaul who already
possessed the French qualities: order, clearness, regulated development,
sustained and careful style, oratorical tastes. An ardent patriot,
republican at his soul, yet treated in friendly fashion by Augustus, he
wrote Roman history at first, no doubt, to make it known, but above all
to inspire the Romans of his own time with admiration, respect, and love
for the austere morals and exalted virtues of their ancestors. He erected
a monument, one portion of which is unhappily destroyed, but into which
modern tragedians have often quarried and which orators have not scorned
when desiring to instruct themselves in their art.
VIRGIL.--Virgil came from almost the same country. His was a charming
soul, tender and gentle, infinitely capable of friendship, very pure and
white, as Horace said, with a tendency to melancholy. The two sources of
his inspiration were Homer and love of Rome; add, for a time, Theocritus.
Lover of the country and of moral life, he first wrote those delicious
_Bucolics_ wherein he did not venture to be as realistic as the
Sicilian poet, but in which there is not only infinite grace and delicate
sensibility, but also, in certain verses, admirable descriptions that
arouse memories of those of La Fontaine. Lover of the soil and desirous,
in harmony with Augustus, to attract the Italians back to a taste for
agriculture, he wrote the _Georgics_: that is, the toils of the
field, describing these labours with singular exactitude and precision;
then, to give the reader variety, he introduced from time to time an
episode which is a fragment of history or of mythological legend. At
length, desirous of attributing to Rome the most glorious past possible,
he revived the old legend which claimed that the ancient kings of Rome
descended from the famous kings of Troy in her zenith, and he composed
the _Aeneid_. The _Aeneid_ is at once both an _Odyssey_ and an
_Iliad_. The first five books containing the adventures of
Aeneas after the fall of Troy until his arrival in Italy form an
_Odyssey_; the last six books, containing the combats of Aeneas in
Italy in order to conquer a place for himself, form an _Iliad_. In
the middle, the sixth book is a descent into hell, again an imitation of
Homer, yet altogether new, enriched as it is with very fine philosophical
ideas which Homer could never have known. The main theme of the poem and
what gives it unity is Rome, which does not yet exist, but which is
always to be seen looming in the future. All the poem leans in that
direction, and alike by ingenious artifices, by prophecies more and more
exact, by the description of the shield of Aeneas, Roman history itself,
in its broad lines, is traced.
The sovereign merit of Virgil is his artistic sense. Others are more
powerful or more profound. No man has written better verse than he on any
subject on which he wrote.
HORACE.--Horace was a man of infinite wit, profoundly conversant with the
Grecian poets. With that knowledge of the poets he filled his odes with
recollections of Alcasus and Stesichorus; they were minutely and finely
polished, accustoming the Romans to find in Latin words the musical
phrases of the Greeks, but withal remaining very cold. With his wit, his
verve, his very lively sense of humour, his pretty moral philosophy
borrowed a little from the Stoics but mainly from the Epicureans, he
created his _Satires_ and his _Epistles_, which form the most
delicate feast and which have no more lost their interest for us than
Montaigne has. Here was a charming man. He was not a great poet. He was
the most witty of poets, the poet of the men of wit.
TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID.--Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid immediately
followed him. Tibullus was a tender and sad elegiast, less passionate and
less powerful than Catullus, but gracious and touching. All the elegiacal
poets, and André Chénier in particular, have evinced recollections of
him. Propertius possessed great talent for versification, but was more
erudite than inspired; being almost pure Alexandrine, he is more
interesting to the humourist than to the ordinary man. Ovid, gifted with
facility and the skill of a prodigious versifier, dexterous descriptist
in his _Metamorphoses_, ingenious and cold in his _Art of
Love_, has found some pathetic notes in his elegies wherein as an
exile he weeps over his own misfortunes.
DECADENCE.--With the second century arrived the commencement of
decadence. The rhetoricians, who in Rome were what the sophists were in
Athens, only far less intelligent, directed the public mind. They did
not spoil it completely, but they did not give it strength, and the
Latins, believing they had reached the zenith of the Greeks, seemed to
draw less inspiration from the eternal models.
QUINTUS CURTIUS.--However, the Latin sap is still strong. Quintus
Curtius, romantic historian, who wrote a history of Alexandria which is
too generous towards the legendary, narrates brilliantly and strews his
pages with vigorously phrased maxims and apothegms. He is a remarkable
author. The elder Pliny, a very erudite sage and a somewhat precious
writer, is a worthy successor of Varro.
SENECA.--Seneca, who certainly was well nurtured in Greek philosophy,
preached stoicism in concise, antithetic, and epigrammatic styles, all in
highly thoughtful points which sometimes attain power.
PETRONIUS; LUCIAN; MARTIAL.--Petronius was a man possessing highly
refined taste who painted extremely ugly morals. Tragedy endeavoured to
obtain renaissance with Seneca the tragic, who is perhaps the same as the
moralist Seneca, alluded to above, and the effort was sufficiently
brilliant for our tragedians of the sixteenth century, and even Racine in
his _Phèdre_, frequently to follow it. Perseus, pupil of Horace so
far as his satires are concerned, was concise to the point of obscurity,
but often displayed such vigour and ruggedness as to be powerfully
moving. Lucian, spoilt by a certain taste for declamation, is really a
sound poet, more especially as a poetic orator, and in this respect he is
often admirable. Silius Italicus, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, revert to
the school of Virgil and display talent for versification. Martial,
almost exclusively epigrammatic, was extremely witty.
JUVENAL.--Juvenal, arising sardonically from the crowd, is the prince of
satirists for all time. He possessed a passion for honesty, spirit, and
oratorical breadth, and incredible vigour as colourist, the gift of verse
cast in medallions and also the gift of energetic metallic sonorousness.
Victor Hugo, in the satiric portion of his work, not merely drew
inspiration from but seemed saturated with him.
THE TRAJAN EPOCH.--now came the Trajan epoch. Quintilian, in elegant
fashion, with point and rather affected graces, taught us excellent
rhetoric full of sense and taste. Pliny the Younger, gentle and gay,
honest and amusing, pleaded as an insinuating orator, and, under the
pretext of _Letters_ to his friends, wrote essays of amiable
morality which evoke recollections of Montaigne.
TACITUS.--Tacitus is a great psychological historian and moralist. He is,
as Racine observed, "the greatest painter of antiquity," and Racine meant
the greatest painter of portraits. He possessed an entirely fresh style
of his own creation: nervous, articulate, coloured, concise, with brief
metaphors which reveal not only a poet, but a fine poet, in the vein of
Michelet, but with the difference of febrility to the potent discharge of
power.
AULUS GELLIUS; APULEIUS.--Under Marcus Aurelius Latin literature fell
into decay. Aulus Gellius was only a rather untidy or at least not very
methodical scholar who wrote feebly; Apuleius with his _Golden Ass_
was merely a fantastic romancist, very complex, curious about everything,
more especially with regard to singularities, lively, amusing, mystical
at times; in short, distinctly disconcerting.
WRITERS ON CHRISTIANITY.--Christianity was at an adult age. There were
writers of importance and some who were really great; the energetic and
violent Tertullian, beloved by Bossuet; Saint Cyprian, full of unction,
gentleness, and charity; Lactantius, skilful Christian philosopher,
ingenious and possessing insinuating subtlety; Saint Hilarius, an ardent
polemist, impetuous and torrential; Saint Ambrose, exalted, wise, serene,
very well read, very "Roman," who may be styled the Cicero of
Christianity; Saint Jerome, ardent, impassioned, possessing lively
sensibility, an animated and seductive imagination, who--excluding all
idea of scandal--suggests what is purest and most beautiful in Jean
Jacques Rousseau; finally, that great doctor and noble philosopher of
the Church, Saint Augustine.
SAINT AUGUSTINE.--Saint Augustine is pre-eminently a philosopher, a man
who analysed ideas and saw all that they contained, their first principle
and their trend as well as their ultimate consequences. He was in
addition a great orator; he was also a historian, or at least a
philosopher of history, in his _City of God_; finally, he was a poet
at heart and imbued with the most exquisite sensibility in his immortal
_Confessions_. Probably he was the most extraordinary man of the
world of antiquity.
CHRISTIAN POETS.--Christianity even had its poets: Commodian, Juvencus,
the impassioned and skilful Prudentius, St. Paulinus of Nola. None were
very prominent, all possessed lively sentiment, such as Chateaubriand
evinced, for what is profoundly poetic in Christianity.
SECULAR POETS.--The last mundane poets were more brilliant than those of
Christianity. Avienus possessed charming elegance and rather effeminate
grace. It should be noted that he (with Prudentius) was the sole lyric
poet after Horace. Ausonius had sensibility and remarkable descriptive
talent; Claudian, rhetorician in verse, rose sometimes to veritable
eloquence and maintained a continual brilliance which is fatiguing
because it is continual, but does not fail to be a marvellous fault.
Finally must be cited Rutilius, first because he had talent, then because
even amid the invasions of the barbarians he made an impassioned eulogy
of Rome which is, involuntarily, a funeral oration; finally, because,
despite being a bitter foe to Christianity, he once more involuntarily
defined the great and noble change from paganism to Christianity: _Tunc
mutabantur corpora, nunc animi_ ("Formerly bodies were metamorphosed,
now souls").